s
Birstall RFC

Club Info

A number of clubs were formed by ex-pupils of schools within Leicestershire immediately following the Second World War. Amongst these was Moat Road Old Boys who were founded in 1949. Following the loss of their use of their school playing fields in 1952, the club moved to Birstall Village Park and introduced the game to Birstall for the first time. The club were, by all accounts, regarded as enthusiastic & superbly fit and played all the top clubs in the county at the time. On one memorable occasion, they lost to Leicester Tigers by ONE POINT. Unfortunately, following the departure of a number of players to form a singing group called The Dallas Boys, the club failed to thrive and the club folded in 1956. Birstall had to wait for another 10 years to pass before the game returned with the formation of a new club in 1965. The club took the village name as Birstall RFC, played on the village park and changed in the scout hut. As the village of Birstall began to grow and new senior schools were established in the area, the rugby club went from strength to strength and was soon running two senior sides and a colts team. Unfortunately, despite considerable success, the club failed to recruit sufficient junior players and the club was forced to cease playing in 1973.The current club was formed in 1975 by a group of dedicated teachers at the local senior schools with the intention of providing ex-pupils with a club that would enable them to continue playing the game. It was decided to affiliate the new club with Birstall Community College thus avoiding the “old boys” tag with all the limitations this brings.
With the failure of local schools and colleges to provide any form of competitive sport, the supply of youth players joining the club began to dry up in the mid-eighties. With no youngsters available to take over from retiring players, the club shrank in size until, in the late nineties, it virtually ceased to exist. However, strenuous efforts made by a number of key individuals kept the club afloat and, by the end of the 1999/2000 season, Birstall RFC were proudly crowned champions of the Leicestershire Merit Table
During the early part of the millennium Birstall started to feel the pinch like so many local sides. Raising enough players to field a side became extremely difficult and the club came close to folding in 2003. Thankfully, due to a lot of hard work by the committee and links once again being developed with Longslade Community college, the Green Dogs are once against going from strength to strength. Recent increases in the number of younger players mean that the club is now fielding two sides again for the first time in ten years and then fielding a 3rd XV this season for the first time in 15 years.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

disable

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy for Leicestershire Rugby Union

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the functionality of the site.

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases, there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

Email newsletters related cookies

This site offers newsletter or email subscription services and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which might only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.